San Francisco '05

Mayors Panel: Developing a Broadband Wireless Infrastructure: Elected Officials Leadership Role

This plenary session panel made up of four mayors and one governor emphasized the role of elected leaders in implementing broadband-wireless infrastructure. Chaired by Lori D. Panzino-Tillery, President, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, and Division Chief, Franchise Programs, San Bernardino County, California, panelists included Deputy Mayor Pu-Tsung King, City of Taipei; Mayor Richard C. Barr, City of Adel (GA); Mayor Gavin Newsom, City of San Francisco (CA); Mayor Joe Chow, City of Addison (TX); and Ibrahim Turaki, Governor, Jigawa State, Nigeria.

Lori Panzino-Tillery: Wireless broadband and the Internet. Is it a utility service or not? Is it an essential service? Maybe, or maybe not. It depends on your personal needs and desires. Industry offerings would like us to believe it is essential for a number of financial reasons, as long as it stops short of becoming a basic utility. By why shouldn’t it be? Probably because services are thought of as being provided by your local government. Our esteemed panelists will give you examples of why it should be provided by local government. Defying the odds: Many cities are choosing to offer this for a variety of reasons: economic development, underserved populations, public-private partnerships, photo ops, getting on the map.

Pu-Tsung King, Deputy Mayor, City of Taipei, Taiwan: We’re trying to build a cyber city, or a digital city. See the deputy mayor’s presentation from October 11 [Click here]

Mayor Richard C. Barr, City of Adel, Georgia: Adel has a $22-million budget and 110 employees. I am serving in my second four-year term as mayor, and I’m very pleased to be the mayor and leader of a team effort that began in 2003 with the successful construction and launching of SouthLink.US.

Where is Adel, Georgia? Most of you have probably never heard of it. It’s a very small town in South Central Georgia, where the climate is mild, the people are friendly, and business is good. [Laughter.] We’re the county seat of Cook County, incorporated in 1889. Other towns in our counties are Sparks, Lenox, and Cecil. Because the city limits of Sparks and Cecil join, it is said you’re so close to hell, you can see Sparks. [Laughter.]

Adel is 20 miles north of Valdosta, which is Georgia’s most recently designated metro-area city. Adel is home to 5,300 residents, 100 commercial establishments, and nine industries, including the world’s largest PVC pipe manufacturing facility, GM Manufacturing, which is a Taiwanese company.

We’re one of Georgia’s smaller counties in land mass—only 300 square miles—with a total county population of 16,000 residents. Interstate 75, North America’s busiest interstate highway, dissects our community from north to south. We are rich in history and pride ourselves in being a full-service community.

Because of the formation of SouthLink.US, true high-speed Internet was available within a limited distance of the local telephone company’s central office. Dial-up service was extremely slow, costly and not dependable. Our business community and citizens said something had to be done. Knowing that two feasibility studies had been performed on the deployment of a city-owned fiber-based cable television system, we found the results were not favorable, and we found ourselves searching for solutions. Not only did we find one, we embraced it, we built it, and we love it.

Why build a community broadband network? High-speed connectivity is a quality-of-life issue. While it may not be absolutely necessary, it is expected and needed to become or remain successful, whatever the case may be. We found that we could not be successful in economic development without a state-of-the-art Internet system that would be available throughout the city and hopefully the entire county.

Since our city has successfully owned and operated its own electrical distribution system, its natural gas system, water and sewer system for many years, the citizens felt that a city-owned system was a natural fit for us. It would be operated efficiently, and the people themselves would know who their owners were. It would be them.

While providing a recurring revenue stream for the city in the not-too-distant future, we simply needed the newest and best technology that larger communities were enjoying. It was also very evident that for-profit organizations were not going to provide it because of the digital divide population or at a price that we could afford. We were left with only one choice.

While engaged in the due diligence phase of the project, we determined we could be better positioned to attract new businesses into our area creating new job opportunities for our people. Within the economic development arena, there are deal closing negotiations that we all know take place, and the ability to give concessions on various services, including high-speed Internet, are used as an asset to the community.

Currently the city is studying the applications for our police department, including in-car Internet service for the link-back to the central office.

In April 2003, the City of Adel chose Camvera Networks as our partner for the engineering, design and construction of Phase 1. Camvera was a young company with executives who had been involved in cutting-edge technology throughout their careers with national companies. Their style and commitment to a true partnership to our community comfortably dovetailed with our needs and goals. Their expertise and guidance helped us with the marketing and sales of our new product. Luckily, having very few management and staff has proved to be beneficial across the spectrum of customer service. With practically no plans to increase staff, we required technical back-office support and maintenance for our system, and Camvera has provided that very nicely.

We chose to pay off Phase 1 with reserve funds, and we are now cash-flow positive with the addition of Phase 2. We have 556 residential and commercial customers with the ability to provide speed from 256 Kbps to T1. By early 2006, if you live, work, or play in Cook County, chances are you will be a part of SouthLink.US.

While there are many benefits to the community, we have a community owned, operated and used network. Our customers love the speed, dependability, the cost, and the sense of ownership of SouthLink.US. SouthLink really says “US.” There was a reason for that.

Our partnership with Camvera proves that a public-private relationship works, and many communities in Georgia and throughout the nation are now looking at Adel’s model for their community. And I’m very proud to tell you that we have had, in our short term, over 16 different cities throughout the United States, including one from California to come to South Georgia to look at our system.

Mayor Joe Chow, City of Addison, Texas: I was elected mayor this past May. The City of Addison is located on the north side of Dallas. We have 15,000 in population, 4.3 square miles, and 22 hotels, and 170 restaurants on a single street, and 11 million square feet of office space. And we have the third busiest airport. We have an $80 million budget, and our own police and fire, and we’re pleased we can apply our wireless Internet services to our government departments.

A lot of area in Addison does not have Internet service. But SBC, Verizon, don’t want to put more money into the infrastructure, because they have to lease it, and others compete with them. That’s the reason they don’t want to put more money in, unless they can put cable into the very high-density areas, where they can generate more money, and it’s their choice.

So we felt really frustrated. We had a lot of complaints from residents and businesses. You know how slow dial-up has been. So one our council goals, since I was elected in 2003, was to move forward with wireless Internet service. We began with our Addison Conference Center so attendees can have service. In the beginning we contracted with Sprint PCS, and they put in all the infrastructure, and we subscribed to it, and only used it for that facility, and we charged the customers. Later in 2004, the goal was wireless across the entire city to solve other complaints, and to increase the opportunity to brand our city.

Our city is small but always on the cutting edge, leading other suburban cities. All our infrastructure is better than other cities. If you are driving in the city, you will feel it’s different from other places. So, in 2004, we put out a bid, and Red Moon was chosen. The city charged them a 10% franchise tax. The city doesn’t want to own the business. The city attorney and congressman’s office advised us to avoid competing with the private sector. So, they got the bid, and 10% of the revenue was a franchise tax with sales up to $20,000. If they go beyond that, we take 28%. If gross revenue is $500,000, they can take it out of their expenses, and we charge them 28%.

It took them from March to early August to complete the project. But new projects take some time to tune up. The disadvantage with wireless is the signal. They had 85 nodes installed around the city, in residential areas and office buildings, but in certain residential areas they didn’t have high enough trees or towers, so we had some dilemma. But they installed 35 more nodes, and we have a good signal, and we opened it to police, fire. The police control cars can use wireless Internet immediately. About 10 years ago, our police were driving Volvos. After that, they were driving SUVs so they could see into other people’s cars.

Now, it’s been opened to public works, etc. So far we don’t have many complaints. Even I use it—in the living room, in the car, the park. So it’s very convenient. We have to appreciate the mobility of this service. There’s a trend—we always want to lead the trend instead of following it.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, City of San Francisco, California: I don’t want to belabor the specifics of what we’re doing, because I know you have listened to Chris Vein, who’s the director of our Department of Telecommunication and Information Services, who’s responsible for implementing our Wi-Fi system, or at least the vision we have.

Why is it critically important? When I got into elected office, not too many years ago, the US was No. 3 in the world, but recently, though the numbers change depending on the analysis, today we are No. 16. That’s a remarkable accomplishment in just a few years, to fall so far behind. [Laughter.]

The consequences of that makes you wonder, particularly in the region we’re in, in Silicon Valley, the heart of innovation and entrepreneurialism, of new ideas, among the most diverse regions, in the world’s most diverse democracy, where truly people are living, advancing and prospering together across every conceivable difference—why it is, how it is possible, that we, particularly here in this region, in this great state, California, have fallen so far behind, as has the rest of the country. There’s simply no excuse, and I can’t rationalize why that’s been the case. But I can argue for the present and the future.

With so much rhetoric around the world—this year, it’s about Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat”; last year it was “The Tipping Point”—next year I hope it’s all about Richard Florida’s book “The Flight of the Creative Class.” Not only are countries competing against other countries, but regions are competing against other regions. When I think about San Francisco, I think of a vibrant region. It cannot be isolated to the 47.5 square miles of San Francisco, a city that close to doubles in size every single day because of the work force. That doesn’t include the number of people visiting the city. As a city, we are truly regional, and therefore international as it is a brand that’s identified around the world. In order for us to compete against cities like Shanghai, Singapore, Bangalore, and even against other US areas such as Boston and Austin, we’ve got to be competitive. And the way to do this is through technology, and through tolerance, which I would argue, in the context of my advocacy for Richard Florida’s creativity index, is one of the drivers for the knowledge-based and new economy, in terms of advantage. And then obviously talent, which finds its way where technology and tolerance abide.

San Francisco has long been a tolerant city. We have been laden with great talent in the past, but increasingly we’re slipping and falling behind as we compete with these different regions across the state and nation and around the world. It is incumbent on people like me to maintain the vibrancy of these regions by offering the technology that is so readily accessible around the rest of the world, and for that matter around the USA. We haven’t done it yet, but neither has any other major municipality, in terms of size, around the United States. Philadelphia is laying claim to potentially being the first—135 square miles. San Francisco, again, 49 square miles, with its own unique factors, and that is a city of hills with highrises, basements, a city that’s difficult to cover on any basis, let alone with the technology that currently exists. At the same time, we’re a city that likes to own whatever business it’s engaged in. There has long been a debate about municipalization of our public power, but we are obviously entering municipalization around Wi-Fi. The challenge, of course, is that we have a heck of a time delivering water and sewage, let alone technology, so I fear that we could be burdened that could be extraordinarily costly up front and a tremendous headache for whoever is in my position, or the city’s elected family.

We went through the RFI process that’s been discussed, and we kept an open mind. We wanted to assuage the concerns of those who think it should be municipally owned, and open it up, and also consider any other ideas from the private sector. Twenty-four proposals came in. Some were so ambitious that the confidential proposals that were made by certain companies were made public by those companies to say, Look what we can do. And obviously Google stood out in that capacity, because they said we’ll offer it for free to San Francisco—not only the up-front costs, the long term and medium term maintenance cost of keeping the technology fresh and innovative, but also that it would be free. Period. Not $16, $18, $20, but free to all citizens in San Francisco. We originally said it has to be free to deal with the digital divide and low-income communities, and they took it to the next level and said it had to be free in static form, but also portable form and nomadic form, so you could be anywhere and get equal access to the technology. They do create a tiered strategy as it relates to premium services, for video downloads and the like, which would be, they argue, competitive, and we would have to navigate those discussions as we move forward.

The other 23 proposals are equally magnificent, though I think most broadly speaking the one that seemed to have resonated the most—the big word free—was Google, and of course their business is a very exciting business. And I don’t know where their business will be in 20 or 30 years. I listened to Terry Semel, the head of Yahoo, who said I don’t know if they have a strategic plan, which makes them daunting when you look at the competition out there. They seem to be taking on almost everybody and have had remarkable success, to date, so in many respects they would be an interesting partner for San Francisco, which likes to lay claim to a lack of strategic planning and a bit of chaos around the edges. [Laughter.] I have my biases but as a steward of the public trust we’ll have an open dialogue about it.

But I really feel strongly that we need to be more aggressive and, by definition, more competitive. I don’t think you’re going to see this as a top-down effort. Increasingly, we seem to be focused, for better or for worse, elsewhere, and not focused on these core strategies that I think will maintain our competitive edge in the future, and I find that very daunting and alarming—even more so than losing our manufacturing base, because what we’re really arguing is that we could lose our knowledge base, our competitive edge, as it relates to the world’s competition for the best and the brightest. And that’s why we are so concerned by the quality of our public-education system, the quality of our education system, not only at K-12, but at the Ph.D. and graduate level.

I just got back from Ireland, where we have a sister city in Cork, and went up to Dublin, and I visited Apple, Google, and Intel, and there were dozens of people who moved from this region to Ireland, and because of the competitive wages, opportunities, and the quality of education for those families who moved there, because their investment in people is quite mighty, and it’s no surprise to people who have watched Ireland’s ascendancy, that they’re now the No. 2 economy in the EU. So it’s not just about India and Asia, it’s also about those coming back to life in the EU who are increasingly competitive, and obviously what we’re seeing to our neighbor to the north, Canada and others, so we’ve got to get back on the ball here, and I think Wi-Fi is a fundamental in doing that. And it’s to the peril of our own economic success. We should not be having these types of conferences. We should be delivering speeches elsewhere and not at home because this is reasonably embarrassing, that we have not been further along in this process. I hope to be part of a solution—inevitably politicians tend to get in the way of things, so I will inevitably be part of the problem—but I’ll do my best to get out of the way and try to advance this initiative that can deliver a real promise.

It’s one thing to have access to technology and another thing to know how to use it. And it’s another to have the mechanism to engage that technology and access it. Obviously there’s a huge divide in this country, and that was made crystal clear with Hurricane Katrina, and this underbelly that we’ve now all of a sudden been shocked by with the underclass in this country. Some 36.9 million Americans living below the poverty line—20% just in the Louisiana region—which shocked America. Folks who didn’t have access to SUVs and gas cards—that really surprised people in Washington, that they couldn’t just drive way in their Hummers.

If there’s a question, what are we all doing to truly bridge that digital divide in ways that are meaningful. If I say Wi-Fi in certain communities, people have no idea what I’m talking about. If I start talking WiMAX, they’re more confused. Broadband—I’m not sure I understand that completely. Internet—yes, I think I’ve heard of that. Computer—that’s the thing at the library that’s always got a line and I never use it. And when I did try to use the Internet, it didn’t do much for me. That’s why we put out a strategy called TechConnect, and we are working with Dell and others to bridge the digital divide in our housing-authority projects. We will have the first Wi-Fi housing authority project, we think in the nation, that’s been facilitied by 500 free computers that went into all the units, where we took a large housing unit on a barge. We put it down and we created a training center in that housing authority project. That’s what I think we need to do. You’ve got to bring it home. Not as a slogan, but literally, and provide the tools and training to make it meaningful in one’s life.

I went on the Internet for years and I didn’t get it—I mean that. And I was in politics, and I didn’t get it. Now I get the value of it, and every time I’m discovering something new to advance my needs. So I can imagine where others who are simply not familiar with the technology because they don’t have access to it where they are. So we’ve got a real obligation and an opportunity to unleash the ingenuity, to release the opportunities of a workforce that is as creative, unique, and individualistic as any other, as we all by definition are distinct among one another, compared to one another, and that is tremendous in terms of what it promises, in terms of social justice and morality in society, and of course economic prospects in terms of engaging that workforce. I appreciate what you’re talking about here today. Let’s make it real. I’m open to stealing to any ideas you have, that’s why I show up at places like this. If you’ve got any, send them our way, and I appreciate you very much indulging me over the few minutes of our time.

Lori Panzino-Tillery: I’ll just took privilege of being the chair and asked the mayor—I don’t know how many of you are aware of the challenges that local government is facing on Capitol Hill in the provision of municipal services, and there are bills out there that are for it and against it. And I guarantee that I will be engaging the mayor and asking for his assistance in convincing those legislators that are against municipal provision in helping us get those bills through Congress….

Ibrahim Turaki, Governor, Jigawa State, Nigeria: We are in a region that is in the least-developed part of the world. When we came into office, not even telecommunication—you had electricity, water problems. So people ask, why Wi-Fi? Why technology? Why not water? Why not agriculture? Industry? For us, it’s not the issue of government or others starting Wi-Fi. Even though we are from the least developed part of the world, we are the first pioneer in the Wi-Fi field. We are five years old in this field. We have the oldest and biggest project here. We are talking about five million people, for the 150 million people in Nigeria, we are talking about being a catalyst, and for 250 million our region, and for one billion in Africa. I’m not talking about how much money, but about assets, human development, human capital. We are the last frontier in the world. How do we get into the new economy without making the mistakes that others have made? We are starting on a green field. When we came into office, we had 200 telephone lines working. I had 10 comuters in the LAN department, and they weren’t working.

Our initiative is to provide wireless broadband assets to the whole state, which is 22,400 square kilometers, so that anywhere you are you have assets. Sometimes when you go to the villages, sometimes you are cut off, so we are devising the ways and means of connecting every village to the Internet. We started with centers across the state. We got a lot of help from the US and Japanese governments, and from the private sector (Taiwan). We are 24 hours online, and all our systems are run by our own engineers. The oldest is 23 years old. They are managing the system, because they sleep in the technology area. We have young girls who connect computers using solar cells in rural villages. We are some 200 years back, and we are trying to bridge that gap in a minimum of two decades, and so our initiative is to give a computer to every student in every school. We’re working with other companies in China and Taiwan, doing IP TV so that every community, instead of having computers, can also use it to watch television. We are building content in local languages. It’s not about Wi-Fi alone, it’s about economic development.

The federal government…. I’m very close to the president who had a lot of argument between telephone companies and others on what we are doing. What we are doing affects a lot of technologies…. We’re going to have 30,000 students next year developing software. They are the work force of the future. The students that come out of school will be computer literate, using Google, your own technology…so I thought we should invest something in them. Wi-Fi will enable them to participate in the world economy….